Kombo's Review Policy: Our reviews are written for you. Our goal is to write honest, to-the-point reviews that don't waste your time. This is why we've split our reviews into four sections: What the Game's About, What's Hot, What's Not and Final Word, so that you can easily find the information you want from our reviews.

What the Game's About
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is a video game based on the upcoming movie that is sure to get people into the theaters since the series is based on the mega popular books that nearly every literate man, woman and child has read. This game follows the story of the sixth book out of seven. You play as Harry at his school Hogwarts while strange things are happening and you get to the bottom of it all.

What's Hot
Fans of Harry Potter are sure to eat this offering up. You explore a highly detailed Hogwarts inside and out. You talk with many characters from the book and loosely follow the details in the Half-Blood Prince's story. There are a number of places to go and the talking paintings contain plenty of handy shortcuts. You can get a real sense of what it is like to be a student for a day just by playing the game. As you explore more of the Hogwarts grounds, you will find mini-games to play. There is Quidditch to practice and duel clubs to join. All these mini-games offer minor diversions from the main adventure quest.

There is more focus placed on the potions mini-game than on any other. Since the book deals with a potions book Harry gets, it makes sense that there would be some concocting of magical mixes. You must follow the on-screen instructions and select the right ingredients to finish the potion in an allotted amount of time. You'll be shaking and turning bottles into a cauldron quickly to perfect the color and get through all the steps. Out of all the mini-games, this one has got to be the most fun.



What's Not
The game looks pretty but the gameplay is lukewarm. The main adventure is rather dull. Instead of bringing in new elements, the quest will feel like a string of mini-games wrapped around some item scavenging. There are only so many duels to win and potions to mix before the entire process feels like a spin cycle of few ideas trying desperately to make a game.

All the likenesses are of the stars that play Harry and his friends in the movies, but not all the voices are. Some of the replacement voices are acceptable, but many are not. Why the effort wasn't made to get at the very least Daniel Radcliffe, Harry Potter, the star of the game, shows that the game isn't 100 percent up to the high standards the fans of the franchise covet.

Final Word
The Half-Blood Prince is a game that is too eager to show off all its tricks. After some mild amusement, it quickly becomes apparent that there aren't any more tricks to discover and you get looped into a mish-mash of brief gameplay moments that consist of mini-games. It releases at an unfortunate time when movie-based video games are shedding their stigma for being poorly constructed due to time constraints. The Half-Blood Prince isn't terrible, just average.